The language of local and regional development

I like the fact that both language and the region are indeterminate devices. Language is a choice among an endless list of words and combinations of words and symbols. Similarly, a region is a choice of the way we represent the world we live in. When we write from a regional perspective we create a way of viewing the world for a particular:- purpose, and there is a tradition in this, Wishart (2004) shows how we have used natural regions to present the world as organised into tracts of land based on physical characteristics such as climate; how we have used nodal regions to show the role of central places in providing commercial services to their hinterlands; administrative regions to show how institutions can divide the world politically or bureaucratically; and vernacular or cultural regions for showing how romantic imaginations of people can coincide with distinct bio-physical landscapes.